I'm ghosted by the moderator, is my comic doomed?

[Biccac]

So, my comic was removed from the apps because of a bulge and "pubes?", so the moderator contacted me, and they were very nice, so i edited the bulge to make it less graphic, and they say oh ok good, now you need to erase the pubic hair

i was quite confused because i didn't see a pubic hair, so i say it is a happy trails(stomach hair), but i think like, ok, if stomach hair is also too much i'm fine with censoring it, so i did.

Then they also said all stomach hair in panel should be removed, so i did, and then i never get another response for two days.

i keep waiting and there's never another response, my overthinking ass is afraid that "did i offend them?" "are they pissed because i keep saying it's stomach hair when they said it's pubic hair?" "am i being a brat????", i dont know im really afraid and i dont want to be on a moderator's bad side, i just started!!! I know that some people would just say that this is my fault and this is not a big deal but... idk... this is really demoralizing to me.... and i subscribed to many series with nipples and butts and i ca still freely read it on my phone, the difference is those comics are popular and good and mine is just a first attempt newbie comic, so yeah, sorry for the long rant, no this is not a rant, just me pouring my feelings out since nobody in real life know im making a BL comic lol, is it actually banned from the apps for good?

if anyone curious this is the comic
https://tapas.io/series/Boy-Be-Curious

[BlairFujin]

I don't think you've offended them but tapas staff do take their time with this stuff
I needed to wait a week since messaging them that I've censored everything (wasn't contacted on my wall but through e-mail)

So, recently I've decided to make a separate, more censored version of my first webcomic here to have it up on the app and gain some more visibiltiy I also used it as an occasion to restore some older pages removed from webtoon version. Next morning I found emails from webtoon and tapas that 2 webtoon pages got removed and that tapas version doesn't meet apple's ridiculous censorship standards Ok, I went through all the pages and upped the censorship and once done emailed both webtoon and ta…

[Biccac]

Oh i see, thank you so much for sharing your experience!!! well i was panicking because at first they respond in minutes, like i reply, then several minutes later they reply, and then after that, it's been two days and no answer

[BlairFujin]

I took one look and it may be the problem that there's still some hair in ep 2

From mod's perspective they've told you what to do - censor everything
I general, I find communication with tapas staff really lacking (the thread mentioned wasn't my only bad experience with them https://forums.tapas.io/t/comic-hidden-on-the-website-tapas-not-answering-what-else-can-i-do/58417 )
Do all the adjustments (if you've got episodes scheduled, check those as well) and if in a few days your series is still not on the app and you get no response, write to them again and ask if there are any more problems.

[Biccac]

i dont know.... the one is episode 2 is clearly stomach hair since the pants is high waisted and all... i never heard google apps or appstore banning torso hair, or is it the armpit hair? i just.... seriously i just dont know, i dont understand whats nsfw about stomach hair....

[Kelheor]

I am afraid it's the thing that you should expect, they will most likely ask you to censor everything that could be on a person who is older than 5 y.o.

[NickRowler]

Firstly, I do not think happy trails are “banned”. I have a character with one in my comic and I never got any flack for it but then again, my comic isn’t sexual at all.

I looked at the page you posted and my guess is that it was removed from the app for showing nudity and the bulge. Mature content isn’t allowed on the app but OK for desktop. Apple has strict rules for what is allowed on their store.

[Biccac]

i knoooow, but then again with some other series it's ok for someone to have body hair i dont understaaaanddddd hahahaha

[Biccac]

what i dont understand is, the bulge is nothing sexual, and the moderator previously said that after i edited my bulge its ok (before there was a line resembling the shape of the genital), but then again they said that non-sexual nudity is fne according to US law as it is categorized as fine arts.

and what makes me even more confused is, some of my favorite comic shown something even more "hardcore" than what i've shown and i never had problem reading it on the apps

https://tapas.io/episode/901333
Flaccid penis

https://tapas.io/episode/1076247
Bare butt

https://tapas.io/episode/2367159
Pubic hair in a sexual situation (and i had problem with happy trails in non sexual situation)

https://tapas.io/episode/2324239
sex scene, nipple, body hair

The difference is, those series are already popular and even show up in the recommendation, while my comic is just starting, can't help but feeling some kind of discrimination here....

[BlairFujin]

Did a quick search on the app (you can still read series hidden on the app, they just won't appear in fresh/popular etc sections and search result) and Cellmate shows up only as a censored version, the explicit version you've linked appears to be hidden. Rest of the series appear in searches (unless those folk made censored versions under the same names - didn't check contents) so my guess is they've flown uinder the radar so far

Tapas seems to be checking already submitted series at random or whenever they get reported, but new ones are all checked before they're allowed on the app now (at least that seemed to be the case when I made a censored version of my comic)

[NickRowler]

I am not saying this to be rude, it's just what I am noticing from the page you posted.

I get the feeling that the person who was reviewing your series felt like the intent of it was to be sexual. Especially how you draw your character in sort of a pinup way with the focus being on his bulge, farther evidence of this is the zoom in on his crotch. You also have a topless woman with the caption "Catch me with your balls daddy". Maybe you didn't intend these things to be sexual but I can see maybe a moderator seeing them as such. And maybe because your series got flagged for that, you are not getting flack for other things.

When I think of non-sexualized nudity, I think of something like Dr. Manhattan from Watchman. But then again, I am not sure if even Watchman would pass the censorship of the App Store.

[Biccac]

i see, that's probably it

[Biccac]

true, everything is all my fault, I'm at peace with it now tho since i've read the replies and come to conclusion that, i think it's better if i just give up about this comic, first chapter and already too many problem lol

[NickRowler]

Do you think there might be some way of saving it? It could be just taking things back to the planning stage and reworking some stuff. Tapas can be a little weird when it comes to content that is suppose to be a little horny. They used to be more open to it but after the weird US law and Apple getting in trouble, there has been a crack down on what is allowed on Apps now (which suck). Like I said, your stuff is still allowed on desktop if you want to continue with that kind of story, you just wouldn't be able to have it on the app.

[Kelheor]

Well they did also asked someone to censor really caricature drawings of penises that literally looked like "--3" and "<3" drawn by a 2 y.o. in their comedy comic, so I can't agree about something being sexual or not
My guess someone was fortunate to just not being caught yet.

[fleurravenbooks]

if your work isn't popular, could it be that someone reported your work?
I don't want to plant seed of doubt, but if you said (or someone told you) that non-sexual nudity is allowed and your happy trail/tummy hair isn't meant to be sexual, could it be that someone reported it for/as being sexual?

I think that tapas is super strict with this because app store is weird with rules
edit: this is opinion i formed only from this thread, i'm not familiar with your work so i have no idea would it be sexual or not

[Biccac]

guysss its okaaay, i came up with a realization, i should just make two version, the more mature one with more flexibility for the site (still no explicit scene tho), and one with heavy censornship for both the site and the apps! omg problem solved, hehe, thanks for everyone's reply i appreciate it so much! MWAHHH

[joannekwan]

Since Tapas is still relatively small (compared to WT) they don't really have a dedicated team for reviewing content edits I believe. So please allow 7 business days for a response. If there is no response after that, feel free to create a support ticket in the Tapas discord server's tech support channel.

Join the Tapas Community Discord Server!

EDIT: Just found out about this e-mail you can reach out to about your case! tapasmoderators@tapasmedia.co

[system]

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